Decoherence is a process where a pure quantum mechanical system (described by a wavefunction) reduces to a statistical mixture of states (described by a density matrix). It is of great relevance for a wide variety of problems in Chemistry and Physics such as quantum-classical transition, relaxation, energy and electron transfer, quantum information and computation. The book “Decoherence: And the Quantum-To-Classical Transition” by Schlosshauer introduces and explains this concept in a very elegant way, that balances math and physical pictures. It is the best book that I have read on decoherence so far.

We submitted a manuscript titled “optical properties of laser-dressed matter”. In it, we introduce a generalized theory for the optical properties of matter driven far from equilibrium by light (i.e. laser-dressed matter), and use it to reveal some striking phenomena of the optical absorption properties of semiconductors driven by non-resonant light. Check it out! 

My work on quantum dynamics, decoherence and non-equilibrium properties of molecules and nanoscale materials is recognized by ACS as the PHYS Young Investigator Award. Thank Ignacio and Sonya for their letters, and the ACS PHYS committee for their efforts and time!

http://www.sas.rochester.edu/chm/news-events/news/2018-06-18-gu-acs-phys-award.html

The book ” Molecular Excitation Dynamics and Relaxation” by Valkunas, Abramavicius and Mancal gives an excellent introduction to electronic excitations in molecular systems and associated optical phenomena.

We (W. Hu, B. Gu, I. Franco) published a paper in J Chem Phys titled

“Lessons on electronic decoherence in molecules from exact modeling”.

In this paper, we use exact numerical methods to investigate the electronic decoherence in molecules and provides answers to several fundamental questions in decoherence study.

I presented our group’s recent work on the APS March meeting in Los Angeles including

B. Gu, W. Hu, and I. Franco, “Quantifying early-time decoherence dynamics through fluctuations”;

B. Gu and I. Franco, “Partial hydrodynamic representation of quantum molecular dynamics” ;

B. Gu, A. Garzon, I. Franco, “Optical absorption properties of laser-dressed matter”;

R. Carey, L. Chen, B. Gu and I. Franco, “When can time-dependent currents be reproduced by the Landauer steady-state approximation?”. 

We publish a paper to J. Phys. Chem. Lett. that generalizes the theory for the electronic decoherence timescale.  The theory offers a rigorous understanding of early time electronic decoherence and revealed that electronic transitions among diabatic states can play an important role in the decoherence dynamics.